the old bureau #3 • horror & fairytales

One Day Her Prince Won’t Come: Paula Rego Does Fairy Tales // Izzy Woods While certainly inspired by, I won’t pretend that what follows will be a review of the recent Paula Rego exhibition at Tate Britain. Mainly because the show ended a few weeks before this issue is due to be released, and it would just be cruel of me to bang on exclusively about something that no one is able to experience, wouldn’t it?

Although it is certainly a joy to be able to see artworks in the flesh, there are a fair few pieces that still manage to reveal so much to the audience, even if a computer screen stands between you and the canvas. This for me is one of the triumphs of Paula Rego’s oeuvre. Fairy tales are already such a loaded subject, but combined with the context of Rego’s life and background, her paintings become an art historian's dream. Or perhaps just for the one writing this piece.

Paula Rego was born in Portugal in 1935, the daughter of an ardent anti-fascist and a keen artist. Since the 1950s, her work has publicly criticised injustices and addressed challenging themes, particularly in relation to the experience of women. Growing up in Portugal under the Salazar dictatorship, Rego regularly witnessed injustice, and has since made the victims of exploitation the subjects of her artworks. Although the Salazar regime was considered by many to have been relatively moderate, it actually exercised much of its power through violence. Subsequently, Rego became aware of the many forms of abuse, particularly towards women, as violence against women was ubiquitous during the period. A common theme throughout Rego’s work is the sexual nature of some torture, especially against women, and for me, nowhere is this more apparent than in the artist’s fairy tale inspired works. It’s most likely the juxtaposition of the recognisable childhood fairy tale characters with acts of torture and assault that achieves this end. Let me delve into one of my favourite pieces to show you what I mean...

Snow White Swallows the Poison Apple (1995) is Rego’s revision of the tale of Snow White, and I think I can quite confidently say it does not depict the pristine princess we have come to expect from Disney’s reimagination of the story. We are confronted by an intrinsically violent image depicting the moment of death. Her body is contorted, tense, having just fallen from the sofa in what can only be assumed to have been a struggle.

Signs of distress are all around: her fingers pressed into her throat, the dishevelled arrangement, the red ribbon almost completely pulled from her hair. Even 60